Behind Blue Eyes
by Princess Pheonix Tears
Summary: "But I didn't know! I didn't know what the cost of my actions would be! I didn't know how to take it back! I didn't know what it would be like to truly be the bad man!" Peter Pettigrew reflects on his mistakes upon his death.


**Behind Blue Eyes**

He hesitated. That was his mistake. Actually, it was his _last_ mistake in a long life full of mistakes.

The boy, James' son, had reminded him of the life debt he owed and so he hesitated to kill him. Really, anyone would hesitate to kill someone to whom they owed their life. But of course the silver hand knew the instant he paused. Of course the Dark Lord would have put a safety in place to tie up loose ends. And that's all Peter Pettigrew had ever been: a loose end.

He knew this about himself, even if he didn't want to admit it. He knew that there was no one left in the world to care for him. Now that he was dead, there would be no one to mourn him. No one would secure his body and give him a proper burial. If he thought about it, which he did not care to, the Dark Lord would probably just banish the corpse, caring nothing for it. He would think of it only as trash that needed to be disposed of.

His soul settled outside the house, looking back at the once grand and magnificent manor as it raged with battle. The boy would win. He was sure of it now. The boy knew of the horcruxes and it would only be a matter of time before he destroyed them all. The Dark Lord would fall and all who had stood by his side would fall with him.

Perhaps, then, it was best he was already gone. He wouldn't have to stand on a battlefield, struggling to keep up with the other death eaters only to watch as his side lost. He wasn't sure he could bear that. He did not want to be one of the many who would be put into Azkaban when the Dark Lord fell. All he wanted was to survive and now even that dream had been lost. But really, that dream was never going to come to pass, even if he made it to the final battle. He realized that now. All there was left now was a lost soul full of memories of a life wasted.

He had always been weak. As a child he had been bullied constantly until there was little left of his own constitution. He did the only thing he could think of at the time, fall at the feet of the bully, praising his strength in hopes that he would be spared any more pain and torment. The plan had worked so well back then that he modeled the rest of his life after that moment. He simply chose not to think of what kind of man that had made him.

He had arrived at Hogwarts, scared and desperate to latch on to anyone he might call a friend. It had been Sirius who found him, sitting forlornly on the platform, unsure of himself and where to go. He had been nearly in tears when Sirius had extended a hand, offered protection and friendship. He had been so grateful for the offer that he had spent the next seven years tailing after Sirius and his two best friends, James and Remus. Those had been the best days of his life.

Looking back now, he realized that those were the only years he had ever been truly happy. Well, it was the closest he had ever gotten to truly happy. The closest thing he had ever found to true friendship was found in his relationship with the three popular boys who allowed him to tag along with them. In hindsight he realized that their offer had been honest and true and it was his own experience that made him doubt them. It was his own pathetic past that had caused him to treat those boys with the same fear he had treated everyone else with. When had be begun to assume that _everyone_ was a bully?

As his school days drew to a close the whispers of dark things, of the evil that goes bump in the night, became louder and more clear. His fear- it was always his damn fear- that determined his actions. He had joined the light, the Order of the Phoenix, in a sad attempt to save his own skin. At the time he hadn't known much about the causes of the conflict and he didn't care to know. He just wanted to find the group most likely to save him. At first it had been the Order.

The next couple of years had passed and he grew restless and far more fearful. The darkness was growing and it was threatening to take him over. The whispers of power and glory and safety echoed in his ears at night. The call finally came and he was too weak to ignore it. That had been his next big mistake: giving into the fear and the dark. It had cost him more than his friends. It had cost him his soul.

There was only a short time after his fall that he allowed himself to think about his friends, the only people who had truly cared for him. At night he curled into a ball, his naked pink tail flicking around his body, mocking him and what he had become- what he had always been. His thoughts would wander to the dead and there were nights he would feel regret and remorse. There were fleeting moments when he wished he could take it all back.

But mostly his nights were filled with dreams. It would surprise people to know that about him. He was not smart or powerful or talented in any regard, but he was smart enough to know these things about himself. So at night he dreamed. He dreamed of all the things that could have been that never would be. He dreamed of life that wasn't wasted.

In his dreams he was tall, fit, and smart. More than anything he had wanted to be smart. He figured that if he had intelligence then power and success would follow him. He dreamed of being fearless, of having the courage to have convictions- a concept he'd never understood in his miserable lifetime.

In his dreams, he didn't make mistakes. He wasn't bullied or picked on. In his dreams he was not pathetic. In his dreams he was a normal man. He was a man who fell in love, married, and raised a family better than he was ever raised.

As the years wore on, the dreams faded into the darkness that had consumed him. Then the time came that he was finally revealed to the world. He shouldn't have stayed in Britain. That had been another mistake. He should have fled to a distant land. He should have allowed his rat form to take him to places where he could become human again and live out some semblance of a normal life.

Despite his previous mistakes he was given another chance. He could stand up and take the blame for his actions. He could exonerate an innocent man. He could save one life in and start making up for the lives he'd destroyed. But the chance he had been given was painful and it required a sense of courage that he didn't possess- couldn't possess.

So he took the easy way out. He ran, leaving behind a boy he owed his life to and the men who had been the only true friends he had ever had. He went in search of the darkness that consumed him. It owned him now, and in his small mind there was no going back to the light. It was too late for that. It was too late for him.

The last of his years were spent cowering in the darkness that he feared. His life was reduced to little more than slavery. He served the Dark Lord willingly because to oppose him at this point would mean certain death. He had done everything he could thus far to avoid that and he wasn't going to put himself in harm's way now.

And then, out of nowhere, the dreams returned. The dreams of a life better than this one. Dreams of the light and of happiness. They disturbed him more than the monster he served. They hurt him more than cutting off his own hand had hurt him. They began to consume him more than the darkness ever had.

It was the idea and memory of those dreams that had fueled the hesitation. For one brief second he thought that maybe he could be redeemed, that he could be saved in all the ways that counted. It had been his last mistake.

He closed his eyes as his mind drifted over the memory of his own hand coming up to strangle him. It was fitting, he thought, that he who had made so many mistakes- who had tried so desperately to save his own skin was the one who was ending his life. His life was all he had and now he was taking it away from himself.

The mistakes he'd made flashed through his eyes as the breath left his body. His own selfishness in trying to survive above all else had caused him to do one stupid thing after another. It had caused him to spit in the face of all chances of redemption. And now the one thing he had always feared was coming to pass and it was at his own hand. How utterly ironic.

His watery blue eyes looked around at his current state. The fog was dense and white. It surrounded him, making him feel enclosed and anxious. There had to be some way out of this. There had to be a way to get to a better place than this. This could not be all that there was.

He moved, but nothing happened. The scene did not change no matter what direction he moved in. It was then that he realized he was in an afterlife of his own creation. A place where there was no darkness and no light. There was nothing around to hurt him. There was no one around to taunt him and abuse him. He was alone with only his memories of the deeds he'd done.

And suddenly the memories came, bursting through the dam of his mind and rushing over him like a waterfall. The feeling was so intense that he thought for a moment that he truly was drowning. How awful it would be to drown when one was already dead.

The only way to ignore the feeling of suffocation was to embrace the memories, to experience each of them in such a powerful way that it was as if he were living his life all over again. The moments where redemption had been offered flashed in front of his eyes, taunting him. They reminded him of all that had been and all that could have been but never would be.

As the scenes flashed faster and faster before him, he cried out in hopelessness and despair. "But I didn't know! I didn't know what the cost of my actions would be! I didn't know how to take it back! I didn't know what it would really be like to be the bad man!"

And with that he fell to his knees. His own memories taking him out again. He cried. He cried like a child- like the pathetic nothing he was. It was his fate, he now understood, to look upon this life and relive the moments where he could have changed, where he could have made a difference in his own life. He would spend eternity looking at the times when he truly could have lived instead of trying not to die.

True to his form and his own patterns of behavior, he gave in. It was bigger than he, this eternity and this feeling of despair, so he gave into it because even in death he did not know how to fight, how to stand up for himself.

And so, for the rest of eternity, Peter Pettigrew was known amongst the spirits as the sad man.


End file.
